Descartes and Leibniz

Royal Institute of Philosophy

Descartes and Leibniz in 1946: On Their 350th and 300th BirthdaysAuthor(s): Paul SchreckerSource: Philosophy, Vol. 21, No. 80 (Nov., 1946), pp. 205-233Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3748271 .

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DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN 1946 On Their 350th and 300th Birthdays

PROFESSOR PAUL SCHRECKER

I

THE three hundred and fiftieth birthday of Rene Descartes and the three hundredth of G. W. Leibniz, both being commemorated this year, recall to mind an epoch which, in many respects, resembled our own more than any other period of modern history. The Thirty Years' War during which Descartes served four years in the armies of the Dukes of Nassau and Bavaria and the aftermath of which determined many circumstances of Leibniz's life and work, was largely an ideological war leaving Europe in a state of tension, which the Peace of Westphalia did little to allay. As a matter of fact, the strife continued in many changing forms up to the time of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, if it can be said at all to have been terminated by these events.

More than in any other epoch, the philosophers of the seventeenth century were political protagonists. Like those of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the systems of Descartes and Leibniz were not incidental to given texts of political and social events, but con- tributed to producing and to shaping them. Neither of them nor any other of the great spirits of the time was a university professor; they taught only through the media of their written works. In so far as the universities were concerned, the thinkers whose works survived were outsiders, if not outcasts. When, as in the case of Spinoza, a continental university offered a chair to one of them, he refused it for the sake of preserving his intellectual freedom.

In whatever light the doctrines of these philosophers may appear to posterity, in their time they were genuinely revolutionary. Only because intellectual history later emasculated their new methods and visions before adopting them officially, have some of their ideas become commonplace patterns of thought, while their very essence remains a revolutionary plea for liberty, reason, and justice, which to-day still holds far more than antiquarian interest.

Nothing could more convincingly illustrate the revolutionary tendency of Descartes' search for truth, not only within the frame of reference of his own time but in itself, than the fact that when, a few years ago, a reactionary counter-revolution set out in Germany

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to suppress the achievements of the French Revolution, its philosophical mercenaries promptly undertook to "refute" Cartesianism, feeling very clearly that, as Michelet affirmed long ago, the French Revolution began with Descartes.'

What is it, then, that endows the simple, dispassionate and, in so far as politics are concerned, apparently irrelevant work of Descartes with its revolutionary elan? To speak of revolutions in science is more than a mere metaphor. Just as the essence of a political revolution is the unlawful change of the generative principles of lawfulness, called constitution, so a revolution in science is not marked by sensa- tional inventions and discoveries, but by such changes of the generative principles of knowledge, called methods, which are not authorized by the actually valid canons of methodology.2 The publication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia certainly was one of the most important events in the history of moder science, and changed our knowledge of the universe much more radically than Descartes' Discours de la Methode or Principes de Philosophie. Yet the Discours was revolutionary, which the Principia hardly were; the reason for this difference being that, whereas Newton's work, the work of an authentical genius, used and improved existing methods, the Discours overthrew the whole elaborate system of methodology built up by many centuries of medieval tradition. We are to-day so accustomed to con- sidering independent reasoning and experience as the only methods of attaining scientific knowledge, that we cannot easily understand that prior to Galileo and Descartes so many generations considered such methods and tests of truth as next to irrelevant and satisfied their desire for knowledge with theories and opinions legitimated only by the fact that they had been voiced by some consecrated authority or were deducible from a system recognized on such grounds. Yet, however difficult it may be for a modern mind to understand it, whatever opinion was incompatible with some passage of the Sacred Scriptures, of Aristotle, Euclid, Hippocrates, Thomas Aquinas, or some other schoolman of equal credit, was by this very incompatibility marked as false, nay as criminal nonconformity. Mathematics, physics, medicine, and history, just as philosophy and theology, were paralysed by the absolute authority of the Ancients. Even physical geography did not enjoy a greater freedom. One of the crimes for which Michel Servet was burned at the stake was his having affirmed Palestine to be an arid and barren region, whereas, according to the Old Testament, it was the land where milk and honey flowed. Even in 1678, after the Cartesian revolution of science had already

1 Cf. P. Schrecker, La Rdpublique, fille de Descartes ("La Republique Frangaise," Vol. I, No. 2, New York, I944).

2 Cf. P. Schrecker, Le probleme de la rdvolution dans la philosophie de l'histoire ("Renaissance," Vol. I, pp. 270-290, New York, I943). 206



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begun to bear rich fruit, Louis XIV forbade the introduction of Cartesian physics at his universities and imposed on them the teach- ing of petrified Aristotelian science. The motive behind this autocratic interdiction illuminates the significance of the Cartesian revolution. For if disrespect for authority were tolerated in the field of knowledge, nothing could be expected to prevent the spirit of sub- version from spreading into the entire domain ruled by some vested authority.

It is doubtful whether Descartes ever realized the potential political effects of his revolution. In his works he expressly limited the scope of his new method of common sense and reason and the individualistic starting point of free consent to evidence to the field of knowledge, pointedly excepting even religious belief from its reach. But this question is at best of mere biographical interest. It is, indeed, one of the best-founded experiences of history that civilization, despite its articulation by several seemingly independent fields, tends toward organic unity, so that every radical upheaval originating in one of the fields, be it knowledge, religion, politics, or any other, will in due course of time involve all the others. Any revolution of knowledge is certain eventually to produce a political revolution, and any religious revolution will finally subvert the political order and the basic methods of knowledge. It was, therefore, impossible for the dethroning of the method of authority achieved by Descartes in the field of knowledge not to weaken and finally overthrow similar methods of authority in the field of justice, commonly called politics. Characteristically enough, the movement towards emancipation from despotic authority which in France was spearheaded by science, emerged at about the same time in England under a religious guise. The Brownist doctrine and the Separatist trend which led towards the refusal to accept the guidance of the Church in matters concerning an individual's pursuit of salvation, were, essentially if not historically, a translation of the structure of the Cartesian individualistic revolution of science into terms of Christian religion. In both cases the discarding of traditional patterns necessitated auxiliary hypotheses which provoked perplexing dilemmas and called for the intellectual efforts of another generation to overcome them.

The basic traits of the Cartesian system are too well known to require more than short mention. Truth having been defined as a knowledge so clear and distinct that its evidence cannot be con- taminated by doubt, the main problem became that of justifying the dependability of the merely subjective criteria of clarity, distinctness, and evidence. Since no consciousness is able to transcend its confinement in an individual mind, the task of proving the fitness even of the most clear and distinct knowledge to the world outside the individual consciousness required the intervention of a deus ex

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machina in the form of divine veracity, called upon to back the feeling of evidence and to guarantee the objectivity and reality of subjectively indubitable knowledge. However unsatisfactory this solution might appear, it was obviously the only means of overcoming the confinement of knowledge to each thinking individual's own consciousness, which had resulted from the individualistic starting point of the Cogito. From another viewpoint, the consequences of this theory proved to be still more dangerous. Since Descartes admitted no resemblance between the human and the Divine Intellects, the truth accessible to human reason no longer fitted the traditional scholastic definition of an adaequatio res et intellectus. In so far as a one-by-one relation between the representation of the universe by human science and the representation of the same universe in the Divine Intellect still remained, it was in no way conceived of by Descartes as intrinsic or as a similarity. The act of creation, according to his doctrine, has impressed upon the human soul certain innate ideas which represent the world in a certain way without resembling it at all. Even necessary truths of reason, such as the principle of contradiction or the simplest theorems of arithmetics, were believed to owe their value to a decree of the Divine Will, but were not objectively necessary.' God might have created a world in which their contrary would be true. Thus the arbitrary and, as it were, anthropological character of the whole system of science based on these essentially contingent propositions obstructed to the human mind all paths on which to escape from the seclusion in individual consciousness, and finally led philosophy into the impasse of absolute idealism and solipsism. This consequence, although systematically worked out only in the work of Bishop George Berkeley, was already clearly realized by the first generation of Cartesians and their oppo- nents. Geraud de Cordemoy in his Discours Physique de la Parole tried in vain, as early as I668, to invalidate the solipsistic implica- tions of Descartes' system, at least in so far as the existence of souls other than each one's own was concerned, by referring to the existence of language.2 The Jesuit Father Daniel took up the anti- Cartesian argument in his Voyage du Monde de Descartes;3 and the Jesuit adversaries of Father Malebranche, in the anti-Cartesian Journal de Trevoux, censured the author of the Recherche de la Verite on account of the allegedly idealistic consequences of his Cartesianism.

I Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam-Tannery, IV, p. 18; IX, p. 236, etc. Cf. E. Br6hier, La creation des vdritgs dternelles dans le systhme de Descartes ("Revue Philosophique," 1937, pp. 336 sq.).

2 The work was first published in Paris, I668; second edition, 1677. 3 Voyage du Monde de Descartes, Amsterdam, I696, 2 vols. Vol. 2, p. 49:

"Chaque Cartesien, en particulier, pour parler consequemment, doit dire aussi serieusement des autres hommes, qui sont au monde avec lui, que ce sont des Automates, qu'il le dit des betes."

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DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN I946 The structural parallelism between the Cartesian and Brownist

doctrines becomes evident when it is recalled that the latter was thrown into a similar paradox. The "Se-Baptism" of John Smyth, first pastor of the community whose members some years later embarked on the Mayflower, was, indeed, nothing but anticipated solipsism translated into terms of religion. Since no authority was believed susceptible of being entrusted with the function of legiti- mating any interpretation of the Scriptures as true and genuine, only immediate and individual inspiration by the Holy Spirit could authenticate individual faith. And since the validity of baptism was thought to depend upon the true faith of him who administered it, John Smyth came to the conclusion that nobody could be validly baptized except by himself.

Thus emancipation from authority, in the fields of knowledge as well as of religion, had to be paid for by the isolation of the individual and the surrender of the certainty of truth or salvation which had been warranted by authority. The same rationalism which en- deavoured to render the system of knowledge autonomous and independent of any traditional or conventional pattern, thereby severed the entire system from its direct communion with reality and was eventually forced to secure the reliability of human knowledge on the transcendent ground of divine veracity; thereby again weakening, if not totally obliterating, its claimed autonomy and sovereignty. Yet, this congenital defect by no means prevented the spirit of freedom and independence from spreading from the fields of knowledge and religion to the field of political ideology and organization. If nothing ought to be accepted as true which is not so evident to the individual that he cannot refuse it his consent, why should anything be accepted as just and honest to which the individual has not freely consented because he realizes its justice and equity? If authority is unable to guarantee truth, why should it exercise more power in the field of human actions and be entrusted with deciding what is good and just? This question, though hardly ever raised so outspokenly, dominated political philosophy during the period which separated the British, the American, and the French Revolutions from the Discours de la Methode. Spinoza, John Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire were the protagonists of political thought who, different though their outlooks may have been, derived their inspirations from the Cartesian revolution against authority in the field of pure knowledge and drew the consequences in order to found a new society. The epistemological paradox, however, into which the individualistic conception of knowledge had become entangled, was forgotten and

2 Cf. The Works of John Smyth, Tercentenary edition, ed. W. T. Whitley, Cambridge, I915, 2 vols.; in particular I, pp. xc sq., II, pp. 563 sq. H. M. Dexter, The True Story of John Smyth, the Se-Baptist, Boston, I88I, pp. 27 sq.

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neglected by them rather than being effectively solved, so that it was to obtrude again much later under a new guise. The only real attempt to overcome it was made, a generation after Descartes' death, by Leibniz; but the tragic fate of the latter's work prevented his ideas from ever achieving any deeper influence on history.

II

It is, indeed, one of the tragedies of the history of ideas that the very form of Leibniz's writings and the neglect with which throughout centuries his own nation has treated the task incumbent upon it of publishing the practically complete collection of his manuscripts, never granted to more than a few specialists the privilege of gaining full access to his ideas. All the more or less comprehensive editions which have been attempted were either thwarted by incompetent editors or interrupted by political events such as the Prussian in- vasion of Hanover in I8661 or the Second World War. It does not even seem certain at this writing whether Leibniz's manuscripts, which were kept at the Landesbibliothek in Hanover, and the edi- torial apparatus built up during the course of many decades by the Prussian Academy of Sciences have survived the bombings of Hanover and Berlin. Thus it may well be that the sins committed by his nation against his spirit have deprived the world for ever of the possibility of taking full advantage of the gigantic and heroic work accomplished by one of the wisest and noblest figures of the philosophic pantheon.

There is another more essential factor which has prevented a renascence of Leibnizianism from ever declaring itself, while the history of ideas has witnessed such frequent reincarnations of Platonism, Thomism, Kantianism-let alone the apparently in- extirpable crowd of neo-Sophists, and neo-Cynics. The very universality of Leibniz's thought seems to have barred an ever more specializing posterity from the only practicable approach to his ideas. By cutting up his globus intellectualis into mathematical, physical, juridical, historical, logical, theological, philosophical, and what not slices, his editors, commentators, critics, and interpreters have mutilated its deepest meaning; what remains are his dis- jecta membra, the congeries of which presents only a distorted and fragmentary image of his original stature. Yet, unless and until the unity of his thought is restored, his work will remain one of the many corpses scattered along the roads of history, and though time and again its decomposed parts may have served and will continue to

1 Onno Klopp's comprehensive edition had to be given up after the eleventh volume because the Prussian Government debarred the Catholic and Guelphic editor from the Library of Hanover.

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DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN I946 serve as fertilizers for future harvests, the really original and profound essence of his work will never attain historic reality.

Leibniz's activity started with an acute criticism of Descartes' system, aiming precisely at that element which isolated the human individual and rendered its seemingly most certain knowledge contingent and devoid of any immanent foundation in re. If not only laws of nature, but even truths of reason repose on an unaccountable decree of God's inscrutable will, all knowledge becomes, indeed, at best a pragmatic implement and loses its dignity as an adequate, though imperfect, representation of the objective universe. The whole voluntaristic basis of Descartes' epistemology had, therefore, to be surrendered in order to restore to science the exalted role it had played in ancient Greece. Descartes' God was, indeed, still an absolute monarch whose will stood for reason and who did not owe to his subjects any other account for what he has decreed beyond the car tel est mon plaisir. He was legibus solutus like the princes of Descartes' time, and the motives he may have had for enacting his decrees did not have to be justifiable before Reason. Although openly opposing Aristotle in every possible respect, Descartes had yet accepted as axiom the doctrine of the Peripatetics according to which there is no ratio between the finite and the infinite. Since human understanding is finite and the Divine infinite,truth as conceived by human science can, therefore, not possibly bear any likeness to perfect truth as comprehended by the Divine Intellect. This is an assumption which, already shaken by Malebranche, was radically rejected by Leibniz. God, though still conceived of as the sovereign governor of the universe, now became a constitutional monarch, bound by the laws He has Himself enacted. And even though what is infinite in God is only finite in man, and human knowledge can, therefore, never reach perfection, it is nevertheless capable of participating adequately in the idea of the universe as conceived by the Divine Intellect. For Reason is one. The same reason which presided in shaping the archetype of the universe in the Divine Intellect, presides over man's strife for knowledge. The eternal truths or truths of reason, specifically, are the same for God as for man. He could not have created a universe in which two contradictory propositions would both be true or both false. The system of truths of reason, therefore, which is constituted by the principles of identity and contradiction and some other fundamental principles which immediately derive therefrom, adequately describes the objective order of any possible world which God might have created and consequently also of the one in which we are living. Truths of fact, on the contrary, as represented by the laws and constants of nature, are contingent: they might be entirely different from what experience discovers them to be, without their contrary implying contradiction. But they are not contingent in the sense of

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depending upon an arbitrary decree of the Divine Will. Whereas eternal truths are logically necessary, truths of fact are morally necessary, i.e. their dependence upon the Divine Will renders them contingent upon a power which is determined by the norms of goodness and justice; just as the intelligence, which inspires this power, is determined by the principles of identity and contradiction. Here the natural limitation of the human intellect helps to explain why the laws of nature are seemingly contingent. Man's understanding, indeed, is able to embrace only an infinitesimal sector of the reality which spreads infinitely in time and space. If it were ever able to embrace the whole, the metaphysical and moral necessity of every detail would become as evident as the necessity of any mathematical theorem is to the mathematician who realizes its derivation from necessary axioms. Leibniz often availed himself of a very suggestive metaphor in order to show that what, considered isolatedly, appears contingent, is understood as necessary within the context of the whole. If out of a symphony a listener heard only one bar which might happen to include a dissonance or even a cacophony, he would consider it as contingent, arbitrary, and senseless; if, however, he listened to the whole, he would realize the aesthetic necessity of the detail. So also the laws and constants of nature may appear arbitrary and contingent to our limited understanding, while their moral necessity would become evident if we knew the whole plan of the universe, which in itself is not contingent either, but the necessary product of Divine Reason and Divine Justice operating conjointly.

Evidently this conception of knowledge not only provides science with a foundation in re, but at the same time extricates the human individual from his isolation and integrates him into the order of one humanity and one universe. Since reason is one and since every human being participates in it to a certain variable degree, the potential community of mankind is guaranteed, in so far as knowledge is concerned, by this common participation in reason. This assumption also forms the basis of the irenic attempts which Leibniz pursued throughout his lifetime. Every system of knowledge being constituted as such by the acceptance of first principles of reason, none can be without any value and no two can be entirely incom- mensurable. All the various scientific and philosophical systems are as many aspects of the universe seen from different viewpoints, and only the integration of all of them would overcome the partiality and onesidedness which is the necessary consequence of human limitation, and would approach the universality of a complete and perfect representation of the world. Sectarianism, the dogmatism of the schools along with their ensuing intolerance, and quarrels like that of the Ancients and the Moderns appear, therefore, as an apostasy from the universality of reason and as subservience to the 212




particularism of the irrational element of human nature. If Aristo- telianism and Cartesianism, Platonism and Epicureanism are all called philosophical or scientific systems, they must, indeed, have something in common, be it but the identity of the object which they represent from various viewpoints. According to Leibniz, there are, therefore, no two doctrines which would not be reconcilable if reason were accepted as the arbiter.

III

The overcoming of Descartes' voluntarism or rather the reconciliation of voluntarism and intellectualism achieved by Leibniz appeared in still another point of doctrine. According to Descartes and his followers, including Malebranche, judgment was not to be considered as an operation of the intellect, but as a decision of the will consenting to the data prepared for it by the understanding. Error, therefore, was conceived as a shortcoming of the will acquiescing to insufficiently elaborated ideas. Hence the gradual elimination of error appeared not as a task incumbent upon a formal training of the understanding, but, as it were, on a moral training of human will power. The Stoic and Baconian suspension of judgment recommended anew by Descartes whenever the intellect has not exhaustively investigated the object, or has found it to exceed the reach of human understanding, this suspension was, indeed, a means of disciplining the will rather than a pattern of method.

The voluntaristic hypothesis explains the utter contempt in which formal logic was held by Descartes and his followers.' A characteristic consequence of both the subjective criterium of truth and the de- motion of logic appeared in a treatise imbued with Cartesian spirit, the famous Logique de Port-Royal, by Arnauld and Nicole, which presents a paradoxical example of a textbook maintaining the useless- ness of the discipline it is designed to teach. As a matter of fact, the authors of the Logique did not discover this consequence, but adopted it from St. Augustine. A knowledge of logic, they declared,2 is just as useless to right thinking as a knowledge of the laws of dynamics is to walking. If you tried consciously to walk according to the laws of dynamics, you would most likely stumble at every step. And similarly knowledge of the laws of logic will impede your "natural" sense of truth guided by the original feeling of evidence.

On both grounds Leibniz rigorously opposed the Cartesians. Though he did not expressly deal with the seemingly convincing

1 Cf. P. Schrecker, La mdthode cartgsienne et la logique ("Revue Philoso- phique," 1937, Pp. 336-367). The relevant passages are indicated in this article, the most revealing being the tenth of the Regulae ad directionem ingenii.

2 Logique de Port-Royal, Partie III, chapitre 17.

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analogy proposed by the Logique de Port-Royal, it is clear what he would have replied to it. Of course, he would have contended, we do not need knowledge of the laws of dynamics to walk safely. But if we wish to advance more quickly, or more safely, or more economically than we are able to with our own natural resources, we must needs in- vestigate the laws of dynamics and, thus equipped, devise machines which will help us to make headway far beyond our natural capacities.

This metaphor may well represent the role Leibniz assigned to logic and the means he envisaged to avoid error.' Clarity and distinctness, as well as evidence, are, indeed, but subjective criteria of truth. What is evident to one individual may be doubtful and controvertible to another. In fact, all scientific divisions and discussions arise from the fact that what appears clear and distinct to one intelligence appears as obscure and confused to others. We have, however, but to imitate the procedure followed by the one science which is the least subject to debate, namely mathematics, in order to invent a means of eliminating the subjective and unreliable criteria of truth. Mathematical errors can, indeed, hardly be accounted for by shortcomings of the will which has consented to insufficiently investigated data. They mostly originate in simple mis- calculations, i.e. in insufficient attention being paid to the established forms of operation, or in some false application of the forms of reasoning which are valid per se but do not fit the given problem. Will and consent cannot be blamed for such errors unless lack of attention is considered a shortcoming of the will. Whereas, however, the right application of the right form of reasoning guarantees the truth of the result, even the utmost amount of attention and the most scrupulous will are incapable of rendering the same service, if the right forms have not been established beforehand.

By assuming a pre-eminent function in Leibniz's system of knowledge, logic had completely changed its traditional character. It was no longer identical with the canon of Aristotelian dialectics which had but slightly changed during the course of almost two millenniums and which Descartes had fought so insistently. It was no longer the instrument of classification derived from descriptive biology. In Leibniz's thought it was modelled on the pattern of mathematical deduction and designed to cover all reasoning operating by virtue of form alone.2 Obviously, this approach involved a momentous shift

I Cf. in particular Leibniz's Nouveaux Essais, livre IV, chap. XVII, and Philosophische Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, VII, pp. 512 sq.

2 Cf. the Nouveaux Essais, ibid: "By arguments in form, I mean not merely this scholastic argument used in colleges, but all reasoning which concludes by the force of the form .... Algebraic calculation, and infinitesimal analysis, will be for me almost arguments in form, because their form of reasoning has been predemonstrated, so that we are certain not to be deceived thereby" (Langley's translation, p. 559).

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of the fulcrum of knowledge. Whereas according to the Cartesian school individual feeling of evidence and consecutive consent had authenticated knowledge, now compliance with a trans-subjective, unpsychological, and objectively controllable pattern had to provide the legitimation and the vehicle for the advancement of science. Since, according to Leibniz, reason is common to all men while will is the factor which individuates them, the elimination of the latter from all cognitive function means a weakening of the individualistic motive and a strengthening of the unifying function of rationalism. The epistemological consequences of these divergencies cannot be followed up here. One socially important aspect of Leibniz's formalistic approach should, however, receive short consideration.

The ideal instance of reasoning by virtue of form only is presented by mathematical algorisms. They facilitate operations which, if performed intuitively, in view of the contents instead of in compliance with formal rules, would go far beyond the reach of the human thinking capacity. What makes these mathematical algorisms possible is the use of a characteristic language, of a language marked by a one-by-one relation between symbols and signified ideas, so that the result of formal operations performed on, and expressed in, symbols, may be re-translated into ideas whenever this proves desirable. The replacement of ideas by symbols and of relations of ideas by operations on symbols is so complete that a machine may perform these operations more accurately and more economically than the most perfect mathematician.I This is the idea on which reposes Leibniz's invention of the calculating machine, as well as his attempts at inventing a characteristic language, constructed after the model of mathematical algorisms, which was to open to reasoning by virtue of form many a field in which reasoning by virtue of content had heretofore been the unique method of invention and discovery.

This project of devising a characteristic universal language designed to facilitate reasoning by virtue of form in practically all fields of knowledge, had been forgotten for almost two centuries; and, although revived by modern symbolic logic, its reincarnation in the latter school has completely changed its character. Two essential roots of this idea have, indeed, been severed by the prevailingly positivistic approach to the problem adopted by contemporary logic. The one is the metaphysical conception upon which the idea of a characteristic universal language is directly dependent in Leibniz's project; the other is the Baconian idea according to which usefulness and truth are but two aspects of one and the same structure. With regard to the first factor, the idea of discovering truth through reasoning by virtue of form rested on the metaphysical assumption

1 This is why Leibniz called those symbols Machinae spirituales (Philo- sophischer Briefwechsel, ed. Prussian Academy, I, p. 229).

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that the order of the universe as conceived by the Divine Intellect is a rational one. What is immediately accessible to our experience is a cryptogram translating the original order and meaning of the universe into ciphers. If we were to discover the key determining the ciphering, we would be able to decipher the cryptogram and to discover the original meaning of the book of nature. In so far as the truths of reason are concerned, that is, the order this world has in common with all possible worlds God might have created, the key is provided by the principle of contradiction and its derivations, along with the entire system of mathematics. As to the truths of fact, that is, the invariant laws of transformation which single out the existing world from among the merely possible worlds, experience is required to discover the key. This experience, however, is not always identical with what is commonly called induction. Leibniz believed that essential relations in the order of the existing world might be discovered by exploring, not the result of the divine selection from among the possible worlds, but the principles which guided His selection. Thus, the principles of knowledge called architectonicI by Leibniz in contrast to the mechanical principles, are not discovered by induction from experiences and experiments, but through the application of rational principles which are not logically necessary according to the principle of contradiction, but whose contrary would imply an imperfection of the Divine Intellect and Will which were guided by them in selecting the world to be created. The principles of con- tinuity, of conservation, of the identity of indiscernibles, and the principle of least action are such architectonic principles and keys which allow us to read the text of nature. If, to refer to but one example, we take for granted that it would be an imperfection of the Divine Will to attain effects by more than the necessary expenditure, we are authorized to state that all natural effects are reached by a minimum expenditure. Using this principle which Malebranche had called the "Economy of Nature,"2 and which later became the principle of least action, Leibniz demonstrated in 1682 that the fundamental laws of optics, catoptrics, and dioptrics may be rationally deduced from the principle that light always travels along the shortest, or easiest, or most definite path.3

It is clear that wherever such principles are available, the method which provides mathematics with algorisms may be usefully applied.

De rerum originatione radicali (Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, VII, Pp. 302 sq.).

3 Recherche de la Verite, vol. 3, 1678, dernier Eclaircissement. This Eclair- cissement was suppressed in later editions and therefore escaped the attention of the historians of the principle of least action.

3 Unicum opticae, catoptricae et dioptricae principium, first published in Acta Eruditorum, 1682, pp. I85-I90, reprinted in Opera, ed. Dutens, III, pp. 145 sq- Cf. the Nouveaux Essais, livre IV, chap. 7, § 15. 216



DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN i946 Wherever we succeed in discovering the invariant elements of change, in bringing them into a one-by-one relation with appropriate symbols and in deducing operational rules to be applied to these symbols, we may establish formal reasoning capable of carrying the human intellect far beyond the limits of its natural scope. If, in this case, we still speak of reasoning by virtue of form, the term continues to be used though genuine reasoning is no longer actually taking place. It is, indeed, the very function of algorisms that, once they are established, and as far as their reach goes, they make reasoning superfluous. Operations on symbols which are so strictly ruled by algorisms that a machine may perform them more reliably and more economically than any human mind, can in truth hardly be called reasoning proper. And the ultimate aim of Leibniz's characteristic universal language was, indeed, to produce a symbolism and an operational code, in short, algorisms, which would relieve the human intellect of all procedures wherein reasoning can be replaced by running machines.I

The rationality of the universe which facilitates reasoning by virtue of form and the method of discovering truths of fact without induction had still another bearing on Leibniz' conception of science. Lord Francis Bacon had inaugurated an idea of truth which was opposed to the scholastic tradition. "Fruits and works," he wrote,2 "are as it were sponsors and sureties for the truth of philosophies." And in terms which at first sound as though voiced by a modern pragmatist, he claimed that "truth and utility are the very same things; and works themselves are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life."3 This interpretation of the relation between scientific theory and technological application remained in the Novum Organum in a more or less aphoristic state because it still lacked the metaphysical background necessary to endow it with epistemological significance. Leibniz's idea of the rational archetype of the universe implies as a necessary consequence that every truth developed by formal reasoning represents actually existing relations. "The value and even the mark of true science," he wrote to Malebranche in June I679, "consists in my opinion in the useful inventions which can be derived from it." This is by no means a pragmatist or utilitarian conception of truth. Whereas a utilitarian would claim that truth is an epiphenomenon of usefulness, it would be more correct, in Leibniz's sense, to affirm that usefulness

I Leibniz expected that, due to the invention of the characteristic language, "raisonner et calculer sera la mgme chose" (Opuscules, ed. Couturat, pp. 27-28). Cf. Philos. Schr., ed. Gerhardt, VII, p. 25: "reduire tous les raisonnements d une espece de calcul."

2 Novum Organum, Aphorism lxxiii. 3 Ibid., Aphorism cxxiv.

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is a necessary epiphenomenon of truth. Because his conception of arithmetic was true, Leibniz was enabled by it to construct a calculating machine. The technological application of the theory had a merely confirmative and by no means a constitutive function.

There is a close relation between the invention of algorisms which was the aim of Leibniz's endeavours in logic and the useful inventions referred to in the letter to Malebranche. Disregarding the metaphysical and epistemological background and envisaging only the function of algorisms in human history, we may understand the paramount importance Leibniz attributed to this invention. Useful knowledge consists, indeed, of truths susceptible of being transformed into efficient patterns of conduct, which may be complied with, without any actual reasoning taking place. The operator of a slide rule, or a spectroscope, or a calculating machine, is not required to do any reasoning. Yet the algorisms embodied in the machine he is handling enable him to produce the knowledge needed for some definite purpose. He would be unable to obtain this knowledge if dependent solely upon his own reasoning, or it would take him a lifetime.

The construction of algorisms or of similar expedients designed to enlarge the capacity of the human mind was the leading idea in Leibniz's essays towards a characteristic language. This social per- spective of scientific research was one of the marks which distinguished his philosophy from that of Descartes. Not only was reason conceived of by him as the unifying power which binds mankind together, but it was also considered conducive to the improvement of human work, so that the achievements of mankind united under the realm of reason might by far exceed the sum total of the capacities of human individuals taken isolatedly. Just as historic language by facilitating the expression, communication, and preservation of thought, and often by superseding actual thought, increases the efficiency of human work in the several provinces of civilization and permits the accumulation of past knowledge and its spreading through time and space; so the characteristic universal language would unify mankind and increase its efficiency far beyond any level reasoning by virtue of contents could ever hope to attain.

Any consideration of the role of logic in Leibniz's system as indica- tive of a pan-logistic doctrine in which reasoning by virtue of form could supersede reasoning by virtue of content, or creative thinking, as it might be called, would, however, amount to a serious misunder- standing. For if the construction of algorisms actually appeared as the aim of scientific work, their construction was not in itself conceived of as being achieved through reasoning by virtue of form, but as presupposing "intuitive" thinking, reasoning in terms of things. Even if, as he believed, an algorism could be invented which would 2I8




produce algorisms-a machine which would invent other machines- the operational mechanism would, he realized, at some point or at some level of thought cease to be of any avail, and creative thinking would again be required. Had the characteristic universal language actually been invented, this creative act might have proved to be of such immense power that, within its reach, the actual use of reason might indeed have been superseded by machines. Recent research in the field of formal logic itself seems, however, to have excluded this possibility and thereby to have rehabilitated reason as the sovereign instrument of knowledge. Yet, it should be recognized that the ever- increasing mechanization of intellectual life reposes, at bottom, on the ever-increasing number and sway of available algorisms. It is a strange paradox of the modern mind that its greatest and most admirable instruments serve to cut off its own thread of life-a direct consequence of its having severed the transcendent anchorage which, in Leibniz's thought, still supported the very use of algorisms.

IV

Yet, reason alone, even if conceived of in its widest sense, is not an instrument which can draw the individual out of his isolation and organize the community of mankind. It can, at best, achieve an adequate and common representation of the formal order of the world and thereby, as Francis Bacon stated,' "establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe." But it cannot by itself alone establish the ultimate aims for which this power and dominion ought to be exerted.

Already the selection of the actual world for creation out of the infinite number of possible worlds had engaged a faculty distinguished from God's intellect, namely, the Divine Will. Just as the Divine Intellect was understood as determined by the principles of identity and contradiction, the Divine Will was understood by Leibinz as determined by the principle of justice. The close correlation between logic and ethics in the Leibnizian system was founded on the correlation of two divine perfections. As a matter of fact, this dualism is the result of a merely conceptional distinction. Infinite intellect and infinite justice are in truth only two aspects of one and the same indivisible Divine Substance, considered in its two functions of representing the world and of governing it. It is, therefore, under- standable that Leibniz emphasized the transcendent foundation in the field of action just as in the field of knowledge. Whereas Descartes, in so far as he had tried at all to complete his system by including a moral philosophy, had arrived at a more or less christianized Stoicism, overcoming the isolation into which the original Stoa had morally

Novum Organum, Aphorism cxxix.

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PH ILOSOPHY

confined the individual by means of a secularized idea of the Christian community, Leibniz avoided this isolation by his very choice of a starting point. And just as Descartes, in order to overcome the individualistic consequence of his epistemological principle, had to resort to divine veracity, so any moral philosophy which starts with the isolated individual must remain unable to provide a solid foundation for the moral community of mankind, unless it submits the individual, right after having liberated him from all human authority, to an inscrutable Divine Will intervening as a despotic moral legislator. Leibniz avoided this alternative by not choosing his starting point in the individual intellect in so far as knowledge was concerned, nor in the individual will in so far as principles of action were being sought.

Just as the eternal truths of reason did not depend upon a divine decree, so also the principles of justice did not derive their validity from a decision of the Divine Will, but, on the contrary, like the eternal truths, presided over the creation and government of the world. No principle is true or just because God decreed it to be so; but God complied with certain principles realizing that they were true or just independently from His Will. The principles of justice like the first principles of knowledge are not, therefore, rooted in the unfathomable decree of some tyrannical power, but, independently from any power which may, or may not, follow them, in the idea of justice itself.

We may wonder how a man like Leibniz, so thoroughly experienced not only in theoretical research, but also in world history, diplomacy, and jurisprudence, was able to adopt a conception of justice to which the very experiences he had gathered in these fields must constantly have run counter. While the universality and the progress of theoretical science might, to a certain extent, have justified his idea concerning the reality and reliability of theoretical reason, no such actual progress could apparently be affirmed-without some pre- conceived bias-in so far as human actions were concerned. Yet, strangely enough, it was precisely in his Preface to a compilation of historical and diplomatic documents that Leibniz expressed his conception of justice most emphatically and solemnly.

Were some similar epitome of ancient works on geometry to exist, it would certainly be possible, by analysing them, to find some common principles of logic and method with which all of them complied. Even though the analysed works might no longer be fully acceptable to us, we would be able to state that a number of fundamental norms which they diversely specified, are still valid in our present-day geometry. Thus, it would appear that some constitutive principle, say, the principle of contradiction, is common to all systems which figure as events in that history of geometry. Now, to what analogy could we refer in the history of human relations ? Where is the 220




starting point that would correspond in the social field to the first and unquestionable principles which secured the progress of our knowledge ?

A superficial survey would detect only one principle generally and universally obeyed, a principle which is a denial of justice rather than its affirmation, namely, that might breaks right. A more thorough analysis, however, led Leibniz towards rejecting such sceptical and cynical objections and forcefully to maintain the analogy between reason and justice. In the instance of the history of geometry, the permanent principles are formal rather than material; similarly also in the ever-changing field of social relations Leibniz discovered formal principles of justice, the specific content of which may vary, and indeed varied constantly during the course of history, which, moreover, were violated time and again by positive law as well as by the actual conduct and condition of man, but which, nevertheless, remain the only principles capable of founding human society and directing it towards the general good. And just as the shortcomings of geo- metrical systems of the past may be reduced to neglect or to false applications of fundamental principles valid per se, so, in general, the evils and misfortunes of mankind may be reduced to neglect or to false applications of valid first principles of justice.

Which are the alleged principles of justice called upon to unify human society, analogous to the principles of reason to which the gradual unification of our knowledge is due ? Leibniz first proclaimed a universal principle, namely, that everything must be directed towards the general good. This supreme norm is specified and articulated by three more particular principles derived from classical Roman jurisprudence and which correspond to the three traditional degrees of justice: Strict law commands: Neminem laedere-to harm no one. Equity commands: Suum cuique tribuere-to grant to everyone what is his. Universal justice, called piety by Leibniz and morals in our modern terminology, commands: Honeste vivere-to live honestly.1 These principles, evidently, are merely formal, not material. Like truths of reason which only grasp the order of things, not their substance, the principles of justice only rule the order of actions, not their contents. This formalism seems to involve a fundamental weakness. For, if the common aim of these principles is to direct human actions towards the general good, they fail to teach us what is the general good. Even Leibniz's attempt to elucidate this basis by defining justice as the conduct of a vir bonus,2 is scarcely of any avail since every age and civilization has produced a different ideal typifying the vir bonus.

1 Codicis Juris Gentium Praefatio (Werke, ed. O. Klopp, VI, pp. 457 sq.) Cf. Mittheilungen aus Leibnizens ungedruckten Schriften, ed. Mollat, pp. 5, 8, etc.

2 Ibid.

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Here again, however, the analogy to the truths of reason may serve as a clue. The principle of contradiction, for instance, indicates a requirement for the admission of a proposition into the scientific system, but it discovers no such proposition. Nor does non-contradiction suffice in determining facts; it only facilitates the construction of a method organizing factual experience into one single and consistent system of knowledge. The principles of justice, too, are not meant to determine human actions directly and immediately, but only to reign supreme over the legislation and government of civilized communities. If, and in so far as, the latter do not comply with these principles of justice, the society ruled by them is no civilized community, but only a factual association, ethically undistinguishable from animal associations or from organized bands of criminals bound together by fear or egoistical interests.

This consideration points toward the existence of a generative principle of civilized life in society, which may prove to be but another form or application of the principle of contradiction. Could a system of government or of law, constituted by maxims diametrically opposed to the principles of justice actually be conceived? Could a genuine civilization, reposing on the right to mutual infliction of harm or violation of property be imagined? Such a civilization would also be bound to involve a moral duty to live dishonestly. It would consider as virtuous to be without virtue, and as good anything detrimental to the common weal. A more obvious contradiction in terms can hardly be imagined. Thus, the definition of actions which are considered an unrightful harm or a violation of property rights may be variable. This variableness, however, by no means depreciates the validity of the principles themselves, the less so since the same reservation applies to the truths of reason. The ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle is a transcendent number, whether or not anything at all resembling a circle exists in the realm of nature; and if a circle exists, the ratio by no means depends upon the material which exhibits a circular shape.

The power of the truths of reason appears most conspicuously by the very absurdity of the effect of their having been neglected. So also is the power of the sovereign principles of justice most strikingly evinced in the very instance of their most flagrant transgression, by the tendency of the transgressor to cloak his action in the guise of pseudo-principles of justice, such as the absurd "necessity knows no law"-which itself pretends to be a law of justice.

Leibniz frequently defined, or rather personified, justice as caritas sapientis, the charity or benevolence of the wise.I The alliance of

I Leibniz und Landgraf Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels. Ein ungedruckter Briefwechsel, ed. Chr. v. Rommel, I847, Vol. II, p. 233: "Justitia est charitas sapientis, c'est-a-dire une charit6, qui est conforme a la sagesse, et charitas est benevolentia generalis." 222



DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN I946 reason and goodness in the person of the sage was thus raised to the rank of the ideal expected to guide the progress of civilization as well as each member's participation in it. By accepting this ideal, man, according to Leibniz, lives up to the image of God after which he has been created. "Indeed," he wrote,I "His goodness and justice as well as His wisdom are different from ours only because they are infinitely more perfect."

The affinity of this political philosophy to genuine Platonic traditions needs no emphasis; the main difference being that while Plato was concerned with the selection of persons to hold power, Leibniz was preoccupied with the principles which were to guide them. Here, as in so many other respects, thinking in terms of functions had gradually superseded the search for substances or hypo- stases. Leibniz no longer concurred with the idea that the State should be governed by philosophers. What he envisaged was a human community constituted and ruled by laws complying with the basic principles of reason and justice-whatever legislative and executive organs might be in charge of specifying and carrying out these supreme norms in view of ever-changing historical conditions.

V

The application of these principles to the organization of social life, that is, to the actualization of the community of mankind, followed the same pattern as the application of the truths of reason to the construction of a consistent system of knowledge. Just as no two contradictory propositions can be allowed to co-exist in one and the same system of science, so also can no irreconcilable conflict between individuals and communities, nations, or churches be tolerated under the reign of the principles of justice, since it could be expected eventually to impede or to rupture the postulated unity and to de- generate into a contest of brute force. But the use of constraint and persecution exercised for the purpose of overpowering an antagonistic doctrine or claim is always an infallible symptom of a defection from reason and justice and, consequently, from civilization.

Leibniz's childhood and adult life were overshadowed by the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War. To whatever field of human affairs he turned, he observed moral and material devastation. The Peace of Westphalia, concluded when he was two years old, had not succeeded in eradicating the seeds of discontent which repeatedly during his lifetime were to generate new wars. The main ideological conflict had been, and still was, the schism between the Christian Churches, Roman Catholic and Protestant, and the rivalry of the Protestant Churches, Lutheran and Calvinist, among themselves. True, the ideological dissension served sometimes merely as a screen for

Philos. Schr., ed. Gerhardt, VI, p. 51.

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PHILOSOPHY

dynastic power politics. When it appeared expedient, Cardinal Richelieu, for instance, never hesitated to underhandedly support the German Protestant Princes against their Catholic sovereign. Those, however, who did the actual fighting, suffered and died in the firm belief they were fighting for or against the cause of Papacy, for or against the doctrines of predestination or of the real presence of the Body of Christ in the Host. Our economic determinists are used to arguing that the actual causes of these wars of religion were by no means religious, but economic or political. If this were true, we would have to reckon Leibniz among the foremost victims of insidious "propaganda." From his twentieth year to the time of his death, he fervently devoted himself to reconciling the Churches because he veritably believed their conflicts to be the causes of wars. Yet, Leibniz was no layman in politics, he knew the inside version of diplomatic intrigues and occasionally played an influential part on the international scene. He was, moreover, a critical historian, by no means disposed naively to taking political camouflage at its face value. If he nevertheless considered religious discord as at least one of the primary causes of the contemporary wars, he has to be accepted as a witness whose trustworthiness and competence cannot easily be overruled. Maybe, in so far as the respective dynasts, ecclesiastic as well as secular, were concerned, their religious passions were only masks; but would these potentates have succeeded in luring their peoples to the shambles, had the masses, at least, not believed it worth while dying for their religious convictions?

The history of Leibniz's attempts at actualizing the reunion of the Christian Churches has often been told, though many important documents still remain unpublished.' The principles, however, which inspired this activity have hardly ever been clarified. On the one hand, each of the many churches, denominations, and sects believed itself to be the genuine and exclusive depository of the true Christian revelation. On the other hand, there could hardly be more than one, at least in so far as fundamental tenets, such as the dogma of transubstantiation, were concerned. Hence, the problem arose as to whether the divergencies dividing the several religious communities were fundamental and presented an unsurmountable obstacle to the union of all Christians in one oecumenic church. What instrument could have been of greater avail to the purpose of resolving this question than universal reason, and what norm more competent to rule the relations between the churches than the idea of justice defined by Leibniz as "what complies with wisdom and goodness joined together?"z Rational analysis thus, in fact, became

I Cf. Lettres et fragments inedits sur les problMmes de la riconciliation des doctrines protestantes, publ. par. P. Schrecker, Paris, I934.

2 Schriften, ed. Mollat, p. 48.

224



DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN I946 the method Leibniz applied to the principal litigations of the Christian churches. The conclusion he reached was that the doctrinal antagonism was, to a great extent, merely verbal and that whatever genuine dogmatic discrepancies subsisted, were not fundamental and did not present any real obstacle to reconciliation. Since the Roman Catholic Church, without serious prejudice to its unity, contained within its pale doctrines as divergent as those of the Jesuits and the Jansenists, he concluded that oecumenic Christian unity, if actualized, would not necessarily demand complete uniformity of doctrine, institution, and ritual. The idea of monads may here fittingly be applied to illustrate a relation of the churches which, as early as the twelfth century, had parabolically been expressed by free-thinkers in the well-known Fable of the Three Rings. Just as every monad diversely represents the same universe from different viewpoints, so each church also represents the same Divine Institution, though each represents it from a very different viewpoint, dependent upon variable historic, national, intellectual, and emotional factors. That this was indeed Leibniz's idea, appeared when he once proposed the text of a prayer to Antoine Arnauld, which, he claimed, could be used without scruple not only by all Christians, but by Jews as well.

He, therefore, considered schisms contrary to reason and their effects, religious wars and the atrocious persecutions of heretics and nonconformists, contrary to justice. "I believe," he wrote to Father des Bosses,' "that persecutions against doctrines which do not instigate crime are the worst things of all and that one should not only abstain therefrom, but strive to make them execrated by those over whom one has some authority. It is permissible to refuse honours and advantages, to which they are not entitled, to those whose doctrines we deem harmful. But I do not think it permissible to confiscate their property and still less to use rigour against them in the form of proscription, chains, the galleys, and evils still worse. Is this not, indeed, a species of violence which the victim could not escape but by a crime, to wit, by forswearing what he believes to be true? The greater a man's value the more he will suffer under this tyranny."

Religious wars may have lost their timeliness since the period when Leibniz strove to pacify the religious conflicts which had engendered them. Unfortunately for us, however, ideological antagonisms have not subsided, but are still being used to provide at least sham pretexts for periodic warfare. Yet, everything Leibniz denounced as contrary to reason and justice in the religious struggles of his time, still holds more true in respect to the ideological divergencies which later replaced them. New dogmatic

I Philos. Schr., ed. Gerhardt, II, p. 337 (original text in Latin). p 225



PHI LOSOPHY

credos, under whatever economic, philosophic, or political trademark they may have been circulated, do not even share the incomparably higher dignity of religious tenets nor their legitimate claim for universality. No other means of pacifying the world has ever been proposed from which greater success might be expected than from a recourse to the universal ideas of reason and justice, as recommended by Leibniz. The only other alternative is recourse to brute force- a crime against civilization, whatever its ideological pretexts may be. "War," wrote Leibniz,I "is a state wherein the intention of fighting by force for the purpose of obtaining some thing is avowed. If we could believe that God would always grant victory to the just cause, war would be an appeal to Divine Judgment, or a kind of decision by lot. God, however, for other and stronger reasons, may allow the unjust cause to outweigh. This is why an appeal to Divine Judgment amounts to tempting God, just as though, starting with the erroneous premise that God cannot allow evil, someone were to test whether there is a God and whether He is just." But since it is not always true that victrix causa diis placuit, it is up to man to create institutions which will render the victory of the unjust cause more difficult and less likely to occur. Has this not been the aim of the rule of law among individuals, and should it prove impossible to attain the same goal in the relations of the several nations inter se?

What terminated primeval war of all against all and facilitated the establishment of civilized society organized in the State was, indeed, the reign of law which, carrying out the fundamental principles referred to above, forbade the harming of anyone, guaranteed to each the possession of his own, and aimed at the common good. Thus, the State became the organon of reason and justice. "The aim of political science with respect to the doctrine concerning the forms of government," wrote Leibniz,2 "ought to be to promote the flowering of the authority of reason. . . . Arbitrary power is the form of government directly opposed to the authority of reason." So far as the reign of civilization reaches, Reason itself claims authority over the authority of persons. It would, indeed, be blasphemous to exempt a despot from the laws of justice and reason which, according to Leibniz, the Creator and Supreme Governor of the world is Himself, by His own nature, bound to respect. Leibniz was well aware of the dangers involved in an autocratic regime, since he stated3 that the insomnia of a despot and his resultant bad temper have frequently incited decisions which have brought destruction to myriads of human beings. On the other hand, Leibniz was just as opposed to granting boundless

I Opuscules, ed. Couturat, p. 507 (Latin). 2 Ed. Gerhardt, III, p. 277. 3 Cod. Jur. Gent. Praefatio, loc. cit.

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DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN 1946 freedom to the citizens. "True liberty," he wrote,I "is one of the greatest treasures of human nature; but inferior to reason. Liberty, indeed, should be nothing but the capacity of following reason."

This conception of liberty which followed a very ancient tradition was not limited by Leibniz to the inter-relationship of the citizens of a State, but applied equally to the relations of sovereign nations. Sovereignty in itself is nothing but the liberty of States in international relations, and should, therefore, yield to reason. The isolation of sovereign States is, indeed, or should be, a merely natural condition, even though throughout the centuries it has been misinterpreted as a jural condition. As a consequence, peace between the powers has, as Leibniz expressed it,2 always been like the intermission in a fight between gladiators when they stop for a breathing spell. If the human race wishes to replace this state of nature by instituting an organization in which the inter-relationship of nations, just as the relationship between individuals, shall be ruled by law, it will have to abandon the irrational noli-me-tangere conception of sovereignty. "Just as when the State is constituted by men who have not formerly been bound by obligations," Leibniz wrote,3 "each one binds himself by a common tie, so also the several sovereign powers, as though they were that many free persons, may accept a common tie, be it by law, custom, or a declaration of their wills." Such a covenant of nations would, of course, like the law system of a State, have to be controlled by the principles of reason and justice. National sovereignty, indeed, may be vindicated only if, and in so far as, it is required by these very principles. The conflict, therefore, more than ever acute to-day, between the ideas of national sovereignty and international law is only one symptom of the seesawing struggle for hegemony between the universalism of reason and justice and the particularism of contingent "natural" interests; in more general terms, between civilization and nature. So long as the two ideas of sovereignty and law are not harmoniously integrated into one single and world- wide jural pattern, civilization cannot claim to have won the battle.

VI

Assuming that the peaceful integration of the world is demanded by reason and justice, the problem of devising a means to this end is not philosophic, but political. Two methods present themselves for its solution. The first is analytical: to develop explicitly whatever reciprocal obligations may, at a given point of time, be actually implied in international relations, in the form either of treaties or of

r Ed. Gerhardt, III, p. 278. 2 Cod. Jur. Gent. Praefatio, loc. cit. 3 Opera, ed. Dutens, IV, p. 270 sq. (Latin).

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PHILOSOPHY

usage, and upon this basis to erect a consistent system of international law. There is, on the other hand, the possibility of proceeding synthetically by establishing a universal organization of civilized States to be ruled by a charter performing the function exerised by a constitution in the lawful life of any single State. Leibniz was primarily concerned with the first method requiring the instruments used by historians and jurists. But he by no means neglected the possibility of political synthesis. The first result of his endeavour to codify international law as it had been evolved in those days was his Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus of I693, which was followed in I700 by a supplement, the Mantissa. These folios contain the most important international treaties concluded since the eleventh century, and their interest, therefore, seems to be mainly historical. Leibniz's intention, however, as expressed in the famous Preface to the first volume,' was not that of an erudite reviewing the past, but of a political philosopher striving to draw guiding ideas for the future from the experiences of this past. It might seem at first as though, in the case at issue, the experience tended to be utterly discouraging. Most of the mutual agreements printed in the Codex had not been abrogated by the common consent of the contracting parties, but had suffered death by violence. Far from testifying to the value of international law, this graveyard of broken promises appeared rather to be a monument to the powerlessness of law in international relations. Pacts between sovereign States, it seemed to teach, were allowed to remain in force only so long as the stronger party wishes to recognize their validity. Yet, according to Leibniz, such sceptical conclusion is unduly rash. To persist in it would, in fact, be as unwary as to abandon scientific research on the ground that its history may with equal right be considered a chronicle of false theories. The lack of any coercive power capable of enforcing respect for international obligations does not, in fact, depreciate international law any more than errors committed by the application of imperfect methods discredit the usefulness of method in general. The voluntary concluding of compacts between sovereign States intrinsically implies the recognition of an international law demanding compliance with contractual obligations, qualifying breaches of promise as unlawful and unjust, and thereby proving that the claimed sovereignty has actually suffered definite restrictions. The principle of justice, according to which any such infraction must be considered unjust, derives directly from the first principles proposed by Leibniz. Nothing, indeed, could be more flagrantly incompatible with the suum cuique tribuere than to refuse a State what has been contractually recognized as its due. Nothing could be more strikingly at variance with the neminem laedere than

Vide supra, page 221.

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DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN I946 to inflict upon a State evils from which his contracting partner had expressly pledged himself to abstain. The first commandment of international law and the basis of all the others is therefore, according to Leibniz, the faithful observance of treaties. In the preface to the Codex he sarcastically rebuked those statesmen who, he declared, play with treaties as children with nuts.

To allege "obligations of honour" as excuses for the violation of the given word, was, in his eyes, not only unlawful, but dishonest. "All obligations of law," he wrote,I "are also obligations of honour, above all, those which derive from the pledged word. It is dishonest to violate them, even if exceptions might sometimes be found which, if taken in a strict sense, may be valid; yet they befit lawyers rather than princes. Honest people, the world at large, posterity, and our own conscience are not always satisfied with what may be valid in court." The same consideration holds true, as he noted in another passage,2 if instead of alleged obligations of honour considerations of prestige are allowed to prevail over principles of justice.

As a consequence of this conception, Leibniz rejected Pufendorf's denial of the possibility that nations, by their agreements, create international law, since this denial was based exclusively on the lack of a superior power capable of enforcing the execution of contractual obligations. Those, indeed, wrote Leibniz,3 "who base all obligations on constraint and consequently take power for the standard of law, relapse into the tyrannical definition of Plato's Thrasymachus who maintained justice to be but what pleased the most powerful." The invalidation of this argument at the same time disposes of the attempt to justify violations of international faith on the ground of an alleged moral law of the State functioning independently of that binding individuals. The so-called reason of state, systematically expounded by Machiavelli, and bashfully readmitted by our con- contemporary statesmen under the pseudonym of expediency, pretends to justify unjust and even illegal decisions by reason of their usefulness to a whole nation. According to Leibniz, however, any such argument violates the very universality of the ideas of reason and justice. Any nation taking advantage of such an infraction thereby weakens the very foundation on which its right to existence exclusively reposes.

Loyalty was thus vested with the dignity of the capital virtue of statesmen. "To preach the love of peace," Leibniz wrote,4 "when one makes others feel all the effects of war, to refuse allegation of rights, to refuse to consider modifications, to dictate equivalences and

I Werke, ed. Klopp, V, p. 253 (French). 2 Ed. Gerhardt, VII, p. 509. 3 Ibid., VI, p. 35. Conf. Opera, ed. Dutens, IV, 3, p. 275. 4 Werke, ed. Klopp, V, p. 254 (French).

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PHILOSOPHY

strict conditions; not to tolerate precautions taken by others in alliances or the levying of troops, openly to mock the given word, to pretend such reasons as one is wont to invent for the satisfaction of simple and stupid persons in order to ridicule them; to add chicanery to violence and insult to spoils; these are traits a thousand times worse than even ruin."

Yet, in spite of execrating war, Leibniz was not an abstract pacifist and very well realized the necessity of bringing all possible sacrifices to defence against aggression.' He even concerned himself with the technical details of mobilization and armament and violently opposed the use of inhuman arms which had at that time begun to be common. In I692, he sent to some friends a Latin epigram2 denoun- cing the perversion of the human mind which exerts its ingenuity in inventing new evils, and in particular describing artillery shells devised for the devastation of the Palatinate. In view of the sinister actuality of his complaint a prose translation of the poem may here seem appropriate:

"What frenzy drives the human race? Flashes matching the sky's lightnings flare up, intermixed with infernal fire. Not satisfied with simple thunderbolts, the missiles hurled by man are pregnant with volleys. A second engine shoots from the mouth of the first, concealing many a bullet in its hollow womb.

"To increase the horror, a monstrous mine comes flying, and the dire machine conveys an earthquake. Bursting houses, their walls and basements blown up, are scattered widely through space. Within a few hours the work of centuries is turned to ruin. For inventing evils we men are verily an ingenious flock. Phlegethon himself could loose no more pernicious thing upon our earth, nor was any craft ever worthier of the Stygian god."

Inventions of this kind were and are the ultimate consequences of sectarianism, be the dividing factor religious, political, economic, or, as it became after Leibniz's time, national; sectarianism which "consists in pretending that others should rule their conduct according to our own maxims instead of being satisfied with seeing everyone approach the principal aim."3 The very universality of the ideas of reason and justice ought to prevent this aim from being conceived as the welfare of one nation, one race, or one class to be gained at the expense of the others. "Provided something of con-

I Werke, ed. Klopp, V, p. 617 sq. 2 In Bombos Epigramma (Werke, ed. Klopp, V, p. 636). Bishop Bossuet

to whom, among others, the epigram had been sent, answered ironically: "You have blasted the bombs, and your epigram directed against this thunder- bolt should triumph over all that noise which it helps to forgive." (Oeuvres de Leibniz, ed. Foucher de Careil, 2nd ed., I, p. 422.)

3 Opera, ed. Dutens, I, p. 740. 230




sequence is achieved," Leibniz wrote to a French friend,' "I do not care whether it originates in Germany or in France, for I desire the welfare of mankind." And in a letter to Count Golofkin, Chancellor to Czar Peter the Great, he declared:2 "I do not discriminate against any one nation or party. And I would prefer to see the sciences blooming in Russia to seeing them poorly cultivated in Germany."

VII

Thus, the unifying function of reason and justice or, as we might express it in one word, civilization, is a direct consequence of the transcendent foundation of these ideas superseding Descartes' individualistic and voluntaristic starting point. In a historical per- spective, Descartes' emancipation of knowledge from authority was a necessary step. The authority he dethroned, however, was essentially the authority of persons. Misinterpreting the scope of this liberation, he himself and his followers overlooked the fact that by endowing each individual with absolute autonomy in the field of knowledge, they disrupted the links which make science an achievement of civilized society. The autonomous subject of knowledge was left isolated in an atomized world of thought.

True, to attain certainty of knowledge, Descartes had first to fight for its freedom from the bonds of authority. But once this freedom had unconditionally been actualized, it became clear that certainty could be reached only by again yielding part of the newly won autonomy and making knowledge contingent upon an instance more tyrannical than any authority hitherto recognized, namely, God's inscrutable decree.

As a matter of fact, neither Descartes nor any of his followers ever actually observed the suspension of judgment theoretically required whenever no evidence emerged to elicit the individual's consent and when judgment could consequently be based only on the credit of some authority. Had they not understood their own warn- ing merely hyperbolically, the history and dissemination of knowledge would have slowed down more than under any rule of authority. Each new individual setting out for the search of truth would have had to start afresh with the cogito ergo sum, and no further develop- ment would have been allowed simply to carry on from where tradition had left off. Moreover, any knowledge of facts, even the most primitive, such as descriptive geography and history, would have been-and to some extent actually was in the Cartesian school- barred from the field of knowledge, since its factual statements had unavoidably to be accepted on the credit of some authority.

x Philos. Schr., ed. Gerhardt, VII, p. 456. a Oeuvres, ed. Foucher de Careil, VII, p. 503.

231



PHILOSOPHY

Complete certainty of knowledge and complete freedom from authority thus appear to be antitheses in so far as any creatural mind is concerned, and compatible only within the Divine Substance. Science as it gradually results from the work of numberless generations, is neither perfectly certain nor perfectly independent. The one or the other facet may be stressed in various epochs, but in none has knowledge ever been atomized into individual consciousnesses, and it has also, therefore, never been, and will never, so long as history lasts, be both completely free and completely certain. For knowledge is an achievement of civilization, that is, a result of collective work, and the individual participates in it by absorbing the knowledge accumulated by the labour of preceding and contemporary generations and at best by adding to it his own modest share.

In the political field, the consequence of a refusal to accept authority would be similar and would lead directly into anarchy. We have but to translate certainty by security, and independence from authority by liberty in order to realize the analogy. If security is understood in the only legitimate meaning it may have in this field, namely as the guarantee of justice, the elimination of all authority turns out to be impossible. It appears then that only the agent exercising authority has to be constituted in a certain manner in order to combine justice with freedom. Political emancipation has, in fact, not consisted in the abolition of all authority, but in its transfer from privileged persons exempt from the law to the Law itself. The Cartesian postulate that none should accept as true anything to which he did not freely consent, was carried out in the political field by the institutions of representative government and equality before the law. Thus, the principle of freedom was effi- ciently combined with the necessity of a supra-individual pattern of justice, which, within the sphere of the body politic, is the condition of liberty.

The philosophic doctrine of Leibniz laid a solid foundation for the inevitable compromises between liberty and security, and between autonomy and certainty. By rejecting the subjective criteria of truth proposed by Descartes and replacing them with objective and formal criteria, he at the same time renounced the absolute emancipation from authority; but he also replaced the authority of a person with that of a formal method. And, disproving the dependence of justice upon power, he substituted the authority of objective and formal principles of justice for the authority of rulers. In both respects, the generative principles were conceived of as having their mainspring and archetype in the ideas and laws according to which God Himself, according to His own perfections, was bound to create and is bound to rule the universe. By abandon- ing the conception of God as a despotic legislator and introducing 232



DESCARTES AND LEIBNIZ IN I946 that of a constitutional governor of the world, Leibniz was able to account for the processes of history without having to refer to unfathomable decrees, and to understand their aim as a harmonious combination of freedom and justice in a world-wide human community.

If the denouement Leibniz proposed to the paradoxical anti- thesis of liberty and security were better known and understood, and if there were any chance of the world at large heeding the advice of an interpreter of reason and justice, our present epoch might take advantage of the ideas Leibniz evolved to overcome the conflict between these two primordial desires of human nature. For it may truly be asserted that this conflict not only shakes the foundations of certain epochs, but in ever-changing forms is inherent in the structure of civilization itself. Whether it appears in the form of an antagonism between the certainty of knowledge and its independence, of a dilemma between a secure road to salvation controlled by authority and the free choice of such a road, of an alternative between political security and liberty, or-and this is its present-day reincarnation- as a conflict between freedom of enterprise and economic security; all these antitheses are only various embodiments of one and the same intrinsic imperfection of any historic civilization and the ineluctable effects of the limitations of human nature. But in whatever form the tension may manifest itself, it can obviously be allayed only by one of two means: by brute force used in the service of one of the primordial human desires to suppress the other, or-Leibniz's solution-by submitting any conflict to arbitration by the twin principles of reason and justice.

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Descartes and Leibniz

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